Nodding, I scribbled down their ages.
1843:
Shoshana—17
Josephine—15
Louisa—14
Tyler peered at my napkin. “I bet it’s the oldest girl.”
“Can’t be.” I shook my head. “Shoshana married her dad’s apprentice the year before theRosemaryreturned. If she’d been waiting for a sailor, she wouldn’t have married someone else.”
Tyler raised his brows. “She might have.”
I winced. True, but I hated that option. Why would she have done it? Unless she’d been forced to by her family. “It could have been one of the younger girls.”
“A fourteen-year-old or fifteen-year-old?” Then he smirked. “You know what, sure. I’d never say a fourteen-year-old couldn’t stay obsessed with the same guy for years and years.”
I kicked him. Not softly, either. “Get over yourself.”
“We should look up if either of them never married.”
“I hope they did! Unless they didn’t want to. But no one should stay in mourningforeverbecause of a teenage boyfriend.”
“Hey, maybe she ran a shop on Petticoat Lane, happy with her independent life.”
“I’m fully pro–independent life, but I’m also pro–getting your happily ever after, too, if you want it.” I scrolled through the family trees on my phone, but didn’t find any more details about Josephine or Louisa. “I’ll check with my grandparents to see if they have more records. And maybe there’s a list of the crew, and we can see how old the sailors were, see if we can narrow down who he was.” I froze. “I mean, obviously, I will. You don’t have to be involved.”
“I don’t mind,” he said easily. “I bet it was the first mate. Probably started off as a harpooner, then got promoted for this voyage and gave his oak pin to his girlfriend. He would have had to have been on at least one trip before this one, too, to have reached Hawaii and gotten the shells.”
“Good point.” My phone buzzed, and I started, a little surprised to remember it did anything besides research family trees and shipwrecks and seashells. Olivia, checking to see if I wanted to meet up before Isaac arrived. I hesitated. I did, but I was oddly loath to leave Tyler. “My friend wants to meet up.”
“Kaitlyn’s little sister?”
Right, he’d know who I meant. Olivia and I had always been two peas in a pod. “Yeah.”
“Tell her to come here.”
I glanced at him, startled. “You don’t have to hang out with us.”
He gave me a slightly sharp smile. “Maybe I want to.”
“Okay...”
“Unless you want me to go.” His smile changed, became a shell projecting friendliness. And my thought from earlier in the day cropped up once more: maybe Tyler didn’t have so many people he really liked to hang out with.
“Stay,” I said. “And we’ll order more food.”
Olivia greeted Tyler pleasantly enough, though she widened her eyes at me when we hugged. “What have you guys been up to?” she asked as she sat.
“We went to the Whaling Museum.” I hesitated. “And skating.”
She cut her eyes at me. Olivia knew my whole history with skating. “Really.”
“Yeah. It was... fun.”
“That’s great,” she said sincerely, then turned to Tyler. “Are you much of a skater?”
